Will city openness improve after Filner?

Faulconer, Gloria pledge transparency as audit launches

San Diego will review its performance on releasing city records to the public after Councilman Kevin Faulconer asked for an audit of slow -- or no -- responses to document requests under departing Mayor Bob Filner.

Faulconer, chair of the city’s audit committee, sought the review in response to a story earlier this month about how nearly half of 30 public records requests filed by U-T Watchdog had not been fulfilled. The story noted other media organizations and members of the public were having similar problems.

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“There is an opportunity to make it simpler for the public to access disclosable information by posting public data online in easily accessible and user-friendly formats,” Faulconer wrote.

City Auditor Eduardo Luna on Thursday agreed to an audit, which he estimated would take 1,200 staff hours to complete.

Faulconer is among those considering a run to replace Filner, who is stepping down Friday after a weeks-long sexual harassment scandal. Another possible candidate is Council President Todd Gloria, who is to serve as acting mayor pending a special election.

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Gloria also says he will make open records and transparency a top priority.

“We will address the backlog of requests for public records,” Gloria said in an August 23 speech after Filner’s resignation announcement. “I intend to break through the logjam of approvals for these requests and to deliver documents as required under the law in a timely manner.”

The law requires public records to be made promptly available, but allows governments 10 days to respond under limited circumstances. An extension beyond that can be allowed with proper notice, but the law says, “No notice shall specify a date that would result in an extension for more than 14 days.”

City officials have frequently busted those deadlines, not just with U-T Watchdog, but with other organizations that routinely ask for public records, such as the San Diego Reader, Voice of San Diego and News 10.

For example, San Diego CityBeat staff writer Joshua Emerson Smith sought information July 1 about the “request for proposal” or RFP for the city’s ambulance services.

“Can I please be emailed a copy of the RFP for ambulance service that was completed over the last two years, which has been put on hold?” Smith wrote in an email. “I am working on deadline and need it as soon as possible.”

City officials waited 17 days to respond to Smith, telling him he could not have the document, records show.

Voice of San Diego reporter Lisa Halverstadt asked for information July 12 about who in the mayor’s office took the city’s sexual harassment training program between a certain timeframe.

On August 1, records show, she received a letter from the city, telling her the city had no information for her.

Records obtained by UT-Watchdog under a slightly different request showed that no one in the mayor’s office — including Filner — took sexual harassment training until July 23, many missing the six-month state deadline for supervisors to be trained. That information could have quickly been communicated to Halverstadt in a phone call.

The Filner administration said it worked as fast as it could amid a high volume of requests, which grew more fervent as Filner’s sexual harassment scandal enveloped the 11th floor.

“I get probably a half a dozen of those folders coming across every day,” said Lee Burdick, chief of staff to the mayor told the U-T last month. “So when I see the massive volume going out in response to public records requests, it doesn’t seem to me that we’re not being transparent.”

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Certainly the number of records requests spiked as Filner’s imploding administration became a national story. Between June 3 and July 29, the city received 238 requests under the state’s public record law.

Over a similar two-month period in 2012, there were 134 records requests made at City Hall. In 2011, that two-month period saw 130 requests.

One day last week, the city’s program coordinator for public records act requests, Lea Fields-Bernard, provided answers to three of the Watchdog’s records requests in the course of an hour.

“Thanks Lea,” the reporter wrote in an email to Fields-Bernard. “You're like a public records machine gun today!”

“It’s really every day,” she responded. “This just happens to be your lucky day.”